


Mildred's Revenge

by Tommykaine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action Granny, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 21:36:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13749714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tommykaine/pseuds/Tommykaine
Summary: Humans were not at war with the aliens.That would have implied they ever stood a chance of winning.---An old woman finally grows fed up with the alien soldiers that she's forced to house and teaches them a lesson about underestimating "weak humans".





	Mildred's Revenge

Humans were not at war with the aliens.

That would have implied they ever stood a chance of winning.

There was never any illusion about the outcome since the first of _them_ came down in their spaceships.

They came with a message for the Earthians, but they wasted no time on diplomacy. They were there to take the planet. They had been observing it for centuries by then, studying its technological advances and making sure to always be several steps forward, preparing for their final attack. Now it was time for its inhabitants to decide if they wanted to surrender quietly or be violently exterminated.

The ones in power tried to stall for time, to come up with a plan and to prevent the panic amongst the populations, but it was all in vain.

Mildred didn't know all the details. It was all sorts of complicated and there had been no news on the telly for months. _They_ had taken care of that. No communications allowed, no computers and no radios and no phones, and of course no television broadcasts. Only white noise and static, interrupted from time to time by the intimation to give up and to not bother harbouring the rebellious fugitives as it was only a matter of time before they'd be all annihilated for their annoying persistence.

Mildred hadn't even thought of fighting back but her poor Johnny... her heart ached just thinking about it.

Her grandson had only wanted to protect her from the brutes invading her home, putting their disgusting claws all over her furniture and tableware, dragging mud all over her floor with their boots and slathering everything they stuck their tentacles into with foul-smelling slime.

If she hadn't been so frightened and confused maybe she would have managed to hold him back somehow, to convince him to be quiet and hold back his anger, but she couldn't do anything at all. She could only watch and shriek in horror as he was ripped apart in front of her, his blood spurting all around.

She spent most of her days cleaning, trying tidy up the mess left by the new inhabitants of her house, but she never managed to get rid of the stains from the couch. A silent but constant reminder of what those monsters were capable of.

She learned to coexist with them but she never felt anything but hate towards those horrible creatures. She had never hated anyone in the whole 86 years of her life up until then, not even the bastard who cheated her out of half of her saving with a scam, forcing her to ask Johnny for support.

He was such a good boy... she could not believe someone so kind had to go in such a terrible way. She woke up almost every night with nightmares, his last screams echoing into her ears. Not that she got much sleep in the first place, what with the whole chirping and chattering and stomping of the creatures, walking in and out of her house like they owned the place.

She guessed they did now. They owned the whole world too. No one could do anything against _them_ , not even the government, so what chance did a frail old lady like her have to stop them from doing as they pleased?

So she just grit her few remaining teeth as she swept the coarse white hairs they left everywhere, wiped their slime and claw-prints from the counters and threw away their discarded trash.

They had explained to her that they were soldiers, and that was now their base. She would graciously be allowed to stay, they said in their alien language made of clicks and garbles, swiftly translated by the small contraption they carried on their neck. All she had to do was keep the place clean and free of parasites, stay put and not try to interfere with their mission or communicate with other humans hiding in their near proximity.

She was not afraid of death, not for years. She had lived long enough to be at peace with the idea, and maybe she would finally see her beloved Richard again, in whatever afterlife might expect her. No, it was not death per se, but the idea of such a painful and horrible demise that filled her with dread. She had held poor Johnny for what felt like hours as his blood squirted out and his body convulsed helplessly, gasping like a fish out of water.

She didn't want to go like that, like a slaughtered animal. So she just kept quiet and endured, scrubbing the floor till it shined again, only to see them trot back inside in a few hours with their boots practically soaked in mud, leaving footprints everywhere.

She clenched her gnarled knuckles on her rag, holding back her tongue. Technologically advantaged as they might be, they acted like savages and treated her like a housemaid, taunting her when her aching back did not allow her to clean as neatly as she usually would.

There would be no end to that torment, she thought bitterly, not until her body would finally give out on its own, or _they_ would decide to get rid of her for some reason.

One day, as she was vacuuming the couch, one of those creatures plopped down on the side she had just finished with a wet splat, gooey tentacles splayed all over her pretty embroidered cushions. She froze there, watching as he lifted his legs – all six of them - and unceremoniously rested his muddy boots on her coffee table, the one Richard had personally carved out for her when he was still alive and well enough to use his tools...

Something inside her snapped in that moment.

She turned off the vacuum cleaner, putting it back in its place without a sound.

Then, she carefully ambled down the stairs, towards the old workroom.

She'd never touched Richard's things after his death, but she knew perfectly well where he kept his carpenter tools.

  
  


The thing was, the aliens had completely lowered their guard around her.

Sure, the young human had been a dangerous nuisance, what with his yapping about how he'd kill them if they didn't leave his progenitor alone and his primitive but lethal metallic blaster.

The old female he tried to protect, however, was as harmless as she was slow, waddling around like a newborn Grolak that still had its legs sticky with amniotic fluid. She would not be able to give them any important information on the remaining insurgent locals but she could still be of use to them by keeping their base clean.

Besides, she was clearly too simple-minded of a creature to have any idea of how to operate any of their weapons, and lacked both combat experience and physical fitness, so they saw no reason to walk around armed around the house.

So when Tla'ki stretched out his tentacles in the couch and raised his head, he could only stare in horror as his eyes met hers, unable to scream and call for help as the saw sliced through his throat

“This is for what you monsters did to my Johnny!”, she hissed, her small hand furiously pushing and pulling as the jagged blade cut through his neck.

Tla'ki fell down on his side as he tried to crawl away, his body plopping down on the floor like a sack of meat.

“And this...”, she said, her lips curled into a horrific toothless grin, her other hand rising. Tl'aki could see that she was holding another tool in it, one that looked like the humans' metal-blasters but thicker, and with a narrow spiral-shaped spike at the end. Which suddenly started to spin as the tool came to life with a terrifyingly loud whirring sound.

He tried to scoot backwards on the floor, his tentacles flailing around, gurgled sounds escaping from his throat together with green spurts of blood as he tried to plead for mercy when the mysterious weapon descended towards him.

“This is for what you did to my house!”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the sixth week of the 8th edition of the COW-T by LandeDiFandom.
> 
> Also inspired by the prompt: "An old woman, fed up with the alien soldiers she’s forced to house, kills one who puts his muddy boots on her coffee table for the last time" found on mandywallace.com/58-science-fiction-writing-prompts/


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